MMA - Day #2....

Well, amazingly enough, Tab was up & dressed & making her bed by 7:10am this morning. Had time to eat toast & a banana for breakfast and because I needed to be at work early this morning I drove her to school. She had to wait until we were far enough in the drop-off line for one of the teachers to open the door for her, but she dealt with it.

She didn't believe Michael that today was the first day of ballet until she had looked up today on the kitchen calendar. Then she was hugely excited. I got her there about 5 minutes late because of traffic, but she had a great time. No pics since none of her ballet stuff had arrived yet. Although 3/4 of the order was ready by the end of class.

Drama for today didn't start until we got home. She got cranky because she finally realized the child locks got set again on the jeep and she did not like that. Since she was being inappropriate with her tone of voice and because she didn't follow my instructions to start setting her place at the dinner table, she got put in time-out on the kitchen stool. That lasted about 30 seconds before she tried escaping. After putting her back three times in rapid succession she decided to fall to the floor & have a screaming wall-eyed fit (think p.o.'d 2 year old.) Since she was insisting on banging her head on the floor I tried to restrain her with the bear-hold hug. She has already reached the point where she is too strong for me to contain her, shy of getting really mean & using my knowledge of anatomy to painfully subdue her -- which I won't do at this point. So Michael had to come in and bear-hug hold her for about 10 minutes. Shorter than last night's screaming. Once she calmed down enough to sit on the stool she did.

Took 3 false starts before she finally sat for the full 5 minutes. First she grabbed a Kleenex box & shoved wads of Kleenex in her mouth & in her ears. That reset the timer once. Then she proceeded to bang her head into the granite counter. That reset the timer a second time. Then she decided to kick the cabinets in front of her. That reset the timer for the third time. At that point she got the hint that I was going to keep resetting the timer until she just sat there.

About the time she got done, dinner was ready. She had to clean up all the Kleenex off the floor, had to set her place at the table, had to take all the Kleenex out of her mouth, and sit at the table nicely. Terrible isn't it, what I'm doing....

So at dinner, I filled Michael in on what happened Wednesday night that caused me to have to lower the boom. Take a moment to get in the mindset, if you will. Last Saturday night after a long day at the lake with family, when we got home Tab was really hungry. So I fed her left-over Italian pasta. She proceeded to burp a bit & trigger the hiccups and ultimately vomited all the meal up on her white rugs in her bathroom. [note to self....tomato sauce really stains!] So Wednesday was the second day that I had tried to work miracles & get the rugs clean, as well as scrubbing 3 bathrooms, washing 6 loads of laundry, and completing an entire complement of other household chores. Not my goal in life to be the family maid, but hey "Housework done incorrectly still blesses your home!"

When I picked Tab up from after school care on Wednesday, I watched her interact with this boy whom she had been playing chess with for the past couple of days. Basically she wasn't playing by the rules, moving pieces around willy-nilly to knock over & take his pieces away. Then when he'd say something, she'd start crying or fake crying and he'd clam up and keep playing with her. But I could see the steam coming out of his ears.

Wednesday evening when I started trying to get her ready for bed she was particularly obstinate. Going out of her way to be slow and whine-y and just generally difficult. She was just not doing what she was told, doing what she wanted, not following directions and had a sassy attitude when she'd talk at me. During the day, I had in fact, gotten those darn rugs back to their normal state and had returned them to her bathroom. So when it came time to brush her teeth, she used 3 times the normal amount of toothpaste (Crest Kids in bright blue with sparkles, BTW). Glopped it in her mouth and "accidentally" spit it out hitting the counter, the cabinets and the tile floor, as well as her pj's. Then, she looked up at me and intentionally stepped in the puddle of toothpaste on the floor and ground her foot into the toothpaste, and into the grout lines where it'll take steam cleaning to get it out. And Then, she picked up a toothpaste coated foot and ground it into one of those newly clean white rugs. And Then she stopped, put her hands on her hips and looked up at me with a "So what are you going to do about That!" look on her face.

At that point she has no idea how lucky she is that I stopped at one bare-handed pop across her butt and picked her up and moved her to her bed. Especially since at that moment what I wanted to do isn't fit to type. I told her that her body was not to leave that bed and that if she did I would spank her to the point that she wouldn't be able to sit down and that she would start MMA the next morning. At which point she started screaming & Michael came running, completely confused about what had happened.

At that point I left him there in her room & I put myself in time-out and sat on the porch swing for 30 minutes until I no longer saw red. So true to my word, Thursday morning we started and that was why she had trouble getting out of bed. She's smart & she knew what was coming.

Then Thrusday afternoon when I picked her up at school, I talked to Miss E about Tab's behavior that I'd seen the day before. Turns out that she pulls the crying / fake crying stuff about 8 times in 2 hours every day this week. And when I picked her up, she was doing that to two girls who were trying to play a board game with her and she was blatently cheating to "win at all costs." I have no idea why these kids are putting up with this behavior right now, but I know that won't last. So that was one more "log on the fire" so to speak that told me I had to do something drastic to get her attention.

So all of this was discussed with Michael, in front of Tab, at the dinner table tonight. Then I spoke with her about why I started MMA with her and what the "game rules" are. She is very not happy. She has lost all autonomy. She has lost all TV (an hour a day) and all video games. She is not allowed to twitch, to speak, to move, to touch anything unless I tell her to, or she goes on the time-out stool. Talking when not spoken to, or talking in an unpleasant tone of voice, or talking with an attitude means time on the stool. That the right answers are "Yes Ma'am", "No Ma'am", "Yes Sir", "No Sir", "Please" "Thank You" "Excuse me", etc. Not doing what she's told to do within a 1-2 minute time frame means time on the stool. Whining about what she's told to do means time on the stool. Going through the motions with an attitude means time on the stool.

And it's not a comfortable stool -- hardwood & not padded. Not my preferred place of seating personally.

The topper was when I told her that she's going to work with me tomorrow. Oh-ho, the sobbing that accompanied that announcement was a straight to the stool event. She is soooo smart. She knew that tomorrow was Saturday. She knew that Saturdays mean no school. She knew that this Saturday & Sunday I was working, so she was all set to spend all day with Daddy and she has him wrapped around her finger. So you can only imagine how dramatically she did not take that news well. [note to self -- I'm probably insane, but I know that the person I'm working with will only assign me very few patients, so it won't be a long day. Besides, it will probably be novalty value for my patients' parents to see my surley 8 year old do rounds with me.... I hope.....]

So after dinner there wasn't any fun time. She had to clear her place at the table, load the dishwasher, make her lunch for tomorrow, vacuum the living room. That was fun.... That was 30 minutes or more going over the same few patches of carpet and being corrected every few feet because she kept slamming the vacuum into the wall & furniture. Then clothes had to be picked out for tomorrow. Laundry picked up, room picked up, a load of whites started in the washer (also on Thursday she had coated her favorite white shirt in pink paint just because she didn't get to put on a trash bag as an apron for her painting project like she wanted.... SO Thursday night she had to stain-stick every pink blotch to treat the stains....) Then she had to do about 30 minutes of reading practice. Then she had to spend another 20 minutes practicing what she learned at ballet today, then it was time for shower and bed. And she was in bed & lights off about 8:20pm tonight. Alseep about 15 minutes after that.

The only downside to this method is that I have to be with her every moment while she's home and I don't get a break until she gets to bed, which has it's trying moments. All in all, I'm trying to maintain a zen-like concentration and I know that I'm being mean for her sake. She has got to learn that manipulating people like this is not going to work long term. I'd hate for her to get black-listed by the kids when she's in second grade, especially since I don't want to have to move to get her into a new school. She needs to learn that she's a part of this family and that means working as part of this family & doing her share of the chores. She also needs to learn boundaries & respect and this is the only way I know of to accomplish that. So yes, I'm probably being mean, but oh well. Like I keep telling her when she yells "You Don't Like Me!!!" "You're right. I don't like you. But I love you too much to let you be a brat." She'll get it eventually, hopefully not at 17 years old....